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OPINION

LETTER: White pundits don't understand what black people endured

Martavious Brooks, Contributed
Published 11:04 a.m. CT Sept. 8, 2017

This Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2017, photo shows a view of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. Some of the oldest and largest Confederate statues in the U.S. tower over Monument Avenue, a four-lane road in Richmond. (Chad Williams/DroneBase via AP)(Photo: Chad Williams, AP)

Racism exists in every aspect of everyone's lives, particularly black Americans and South Africans.

I read the various columns in different newspapers and see so many white people commenting about how there should be peace and equality, and how white people were slaves, and how black people enslaved people in Africa. These things are true. But we black Americans have had it far worse and more recent than anyone else.

Georgie Anne Geyer, research black culture, go out and talk to the older black Americans before you voice your opinion about what bothers us.

Sen. Mae Beavers, the absurd apologies should never stop? Yes, a lot of our founding fathers and presidents owned slaves, but tell me, how many openly, outright displayed racism to the point of being openly part of the KKK? How many are standing next to black men, women and children hanging from trees and posing in photographs?

Bill Lee, if your mother and daughters were raped would you want to see monuments of those people everywhere who supported the rape of your mother and daughters?

So yes, it should be washed away and wiped from history. How can you people tell the black community how to feel when you have no clue how we really feel?

My grandmother "Big Mommy" knows firsthand how to feel. She listened to her grandmother's stories and went through the civil rights movement. She remembers when she couldn't buy a 5-cent Coca-Cola because she was black.

We black Americans are now, just now, really seeing some equality. It took the LGBT community less time and struggle to get equality. It took us centuries!

Choose your words carefully before you speak on any platform about our history and how we feel.